Let's discuss this a little bit to get the container plants composition settled at least.

My thoughts briefly:

- There should not be extensive changes to the general region as such. It's a massive piece of work that ought to be honored as it is.

- The fact that this is far away from eastern Skyrim and Solstheim should be more reflected in the container plants composition. While the Belladonna looks nice, I would discard it here and save it for eastern skyrim, should we ever get there. The mushrooms and the holliberries can stay, however.

Possible candidates for addition are primarily Snow Berry, Bleakbell Hay, Lizard Foot. But there are also a couple of others that could fit. Some larger deposits of Widow Kiss to underline the undead theme or even Death Bell might fit aswell.

I'm all for removing Belladonna for the reasons mentioned here, and Bleakball Hay is a fitting replacement, as I've also used it in my concept of the Falkar Foothills. We just have to remember to remove Belladonna from that, too.

We realised that the forest looks very samey in most parts. Insofar it is untypical for a region and a landscape in this gameworld and generally runs into the danger of being monotonous. However, this current shape of the forest also means that it's easy to go lost in it in an amazing and unique way. This is something we should use and even expand upon.

The region currently contains very few points of interest and almost no terrain barriers. Points of interest would make exploration more worthwhile and terrain barriers would prevent a player from being able to just run in a direction to get out.

Changes to the landscape should stay minimal and only where absolutely needed. But should we have to do them, we can just aswell add some barriers to the landscape, like small cliffranges hidden below the canopy or small hidden valleys you have to walk around. In other places where landscape changes are not desirable blocking rockgroups could be used instead for that purpose.

We are also worried that the forest might not feel like an integral part of the gameworld, being very different from anything else. We could address this by ensuring that certain things remain consistent with outside areas. Currently it's very striking that the forest almost only contains some caverns and 1 or 2 castle ruins none of which are encountered outside of it. The ruins (barrows primarily) should seamlessly continue into the forest for example to address this. Maybe even have 1 or 2 reachmen huts somewhere on the outskirts.

Apart from that we want to do some playtesting in order to make us a picture of how the forest currently works, in what areas it's currently monotonous and where it's great as-is.

roerich wrote:It shouldn't be the forest of ghosts and skeletons behind every bush. Hunters warn you of straying too far from the roads., and there's lots of rumors around. But the further you venture into the forest, the more sinister it gets. More than just ominous sounds at night and the occasional barrow.

The density of trees should definitely be thinned out a bit, to ease performance and navigation (we wouldn't want creatures getting caught on every tree in their path). Various ruins should be scattered around the region, including maybe a few villages that are now overgrown with trees. In lore, the War of the Red Diamond likely depopulated the region, causing the forest's growth to devour previously settled areas.